Outcome of Madden suit could influence future cases

A screenshot from the upcoming "Madden NFL 25." Electronic Arts has released the game every year since 1990.

A screenshot from the upcoming "Madden NFL 25." Electronic Arts has released the game every year since 1990.

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A work-in-progress screenshot from the upcoming "Madden NFL 25"

A work-in-progress screenshot from the upcoming "Madden NFL 25"

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Trip Hawkins approached John Madden about creating the popular game series.

Trip Hawkins approached John Madden about creating the popular game series.

Photo: Gina Gayle, SFC

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Former Raiders coach John Madden testified on video for the trial. He was notably skeptical about the first "John Madden Football" game in 1988.

Former Raiders coach John Madden testified on video for the trial. He was notably skeptical about the first "John Madden Football" game in 1988.

Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle

Outcome of Madden suit could influence future cases

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"John Madden Football" has always been celebrated in the video game industry, with anniversary events featuring the sports figures and game creators who made the historic franchise possible.

Like many success stories, this one began modestly, with a casual parking lot chat between Madden and the founder of Electronic Arts 25 years ago.

But now the story is being retold under oath in a San Francisco federal courtroom, where the programmer of the first "John Madden Football" is claiming that his work cast the mold for the series and that he deserves tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties.

Closing arguments concluded Friday in Robin Antonick vs. Electronic Arts, and a jury will continue deliberating the outcome Monday. Whether the case inspires similar suits is unclear, but should Antonick prevail, it would be a high-profile victory for the technicians behind video games - recognition that their coding has artistic merit and financial worth.

Attorneys for Electronic Arts portray Antonick as a short-timer whose work was discarded when different programming teams built new arcade-style Madden games throughout the 1990s.

Antonick's lawyers have said that his work was used throughout the 1990s and that the programmer's influence remains in more modern versions of the game, along with other game series including NCAA Football and EA hockey.

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Parking lot meeting

"John Madden Football" was conceived in the Bay Area in the mid-1980s. The tale of EA founder Trip Hawkins approaching the former Oakland Raiders coach has become legend in the video game industry, enhanced over the years by Hawkins' and Madden's entertaining interviews with the press.

"I talked to him in a parking lot," Madden told The Chronicle in 2003. "I had a little office, and there was a Wendy's there. I wasn't going to give him that much time, so we just talked in a parking lot."

Back then, computer football games were still in the dark ages. An Atari 2600 game at the time had four players on a side, looking and moving more like washing machines than men.

Antonick, a programmer who had played college football, says he was responsible for the programming leaps that allowed 22 players on the field and the execution of a real NFL playbook. Later, Antonick says he developed algorithms that would replicate real NFL player attributes.

"Antonick was uniquely able to apply this approach because not only was he a skilled programmer but he had also played college football and had close relatives who were actual NFL players," Antonick's lawsuit states. "Nobody else at Electronic Arts had this unique background."

Madden was famously pessimistic when the first game came out in 1988, thinking that only coaches and a few hard-core football fans would use it. But with more sports-loving teens and adults entering the video game demographic, the game became a huge hit. Now known as "Madden NFL," the game has come out every year since 1990, moving 85 million units and generating more than $4 billion for Redwood City's EA, according to the lawsuit.

Coding influence

Antonick was credited generously on that first game, with his name displayed alongside Madden's on the bottom of the box and in the opening animations. He says he had a contract for royalties and programmed Madden games that came out the following year for IBM and the Commodore 64.

But as the game evolved, EA brought in new programming teams, which they credited with creating new versions of Madden from scratch without help from Antonick's source code.

Antonick sued EA in 2011 after he says he read press accounts of the 20th anniversary of "John Madden Football" that led him to believe EA brought his source code to new developers without his knowledge.

In their filings, EA lawyers call Antonick's complaint "quixotic" and downplay his influence on the franchise.

"After eighteen months of discovery, Antonick has not a shred of percipient witness testimony or a single concurrent document showing that EA copied any of his code," EA attorney Susan Harriman wrote in a motion for summary judgment.

The trial has been one of the more entertaining spectacles in the federal courthouse - Friday's closing arguments attracted dozens of law students, many from the heart of the "Madden NFL" generation. Hawkins testified, and current EA Chief Creative Officer Richard Hilleman sat with lawyers during closing arguments. Madden also testified on video during trial.

Rare asset

Closing arguments on Friday focused on Antonick's claim that he contributed to the Sega Genesis versions of Madden from 1991 to 1995, with action focusing on field dimensions and the source code for specific plays within the game. Antonick's lawyer Robert Carey told the jury that the programmer's football expertise and code-writing abilities were a rare asset. He said it's clear from looking at the games created after John Madden Football's debut that they used Antonick's work as a base and then fine-tuned the product.

"This is about the expression Mr. Antonick had in his source code," Carey said. "It's about what you do to get the players to do what they're doing. How did you get that underlying data?"

EA lawyers cited the statements of several "John Madden Football" programmers from the 1990s, who had testified in the trial that they hadn't seen Antonick's code and that they had created their games from scratch.

"No one ever saw the source code. No one even talked about the source code," Harriman told the jury. "They wanted to make a different and better game unique and specific to the Sega Genesis platform. It's not (his), and it's wrong for Robin Antonick to seek money for what other people did."

Outside of court, Antonick's lawyers said their client's rights involving other Madden games could be argued in future proceedings. But that may well depend on the eventual outcome of the current suit.